Abbey Addicts
by namelesspanda
Summary: John Watson is reading gossip sites' articles on Downton Abbey, Series 3, but of course this doesn't go unnoticed by Sherlock. Set in the six-month gap in A Scandal in Belgravia. Crack fic.


_A/N: Just a little cracky creation of mine, in which John is an Abbey addict and Sherlock predicts the outcomes of DA Series 3. SPOILERS for Downton Abbey. Thanks for reading!_

* * *

John Watson was still wearing his pale blue bathrobe as he clicked away at his laptop, sipping at a cup of coffee. "Morning," he said, as Sherlock strode through the living room clad only in a towel.

His flatmate paused in the doorway of the kitchen and turned his head only partway, furrowing his eyebrows. "What are you doing?"

"Blogging," John answered, shrugging innocently.

"No. No, you're not." Sherlock whipped around and stalked right back through the living room, pointing accusatorily at John. "If you were blogging, your ratio of typing to clicking would be practically one thousand to one, but you haven't been typing. You've been clicking."

"I've…been _clicking,_" John repeated. He frowned.

"In fact, you've been clicking in a manner that suggests Internet surfing." Sherlock slapped a nicotine patch onto his arm almost carelessly. "And based off of how frequently you've been pressing the down arrow key and your positively sluggish reading pace, I'd say you've been reading something with huge font, large images, and fairly limited vocabulary. Characteristic of gossip sites."

"I do not read gossip sites!" John got up, closing his laptop. "Why would you think that?"

Sherlock exhaled loudly and smiled. "You're defensive."

"No, I'm not." John crossed through to the kitchen and poured himself more coffee. Shaking his head, he turned back towards the desk, just in time to see Sherlock flipping open his laptop. "Bloody hell. Why do you care, Sherlock?"

"Your browser's closed," Sherlock muttered, his long fingers flying over the mouse pad. "No matter, you don't delete your history, so…oh. Well, I see you did."

John smirked smugly. "I was blogging," he said, turning the laptop away from Sherlock and moving to pick it up. "Happy?"

"No." Sherlock wrenched the computer back from his hands and started typing. "I doubt you had time to clear your browser cookies. And…there we are, Daily…fe-mail…they really are running out of good puns these days." He stopped. "Fe-mail? Why were you reading _fe-mail?_"

Sighing, John hung his head. "Could you just…drop it, please?"

"The URL of the page you visited at oh-six-sixteen was…Daily Mail dot co dot—"

"Shut up." John started waving his hand in the air dismissively, as if it could erase the words as they left his friend's mouth. "Please…Sherlock—"

"—you kay slash Downton underscore Abbey slash series…"

"Just shut your effing mouth already."

"…three slash wedding underscore trouble underscore couple dash Matthew dash Mary dash Maggie…"

"_Sherlock!_"

"…underscore Smith slash spoilers slash three dot H-T-M-L." Sherlock's pale, keen gaze moved away from the laptop to see John pacing with his eyes squeezed shut in exasperation. "So _this_ is what you've been watching on your laptop all this time. Hm. I thought for sure it was pornography."

"You thought I watched pornography?"

Sherlock seemed to think for a moment, his face pulled into a small, taut frown. "It _was_ a reasonable hypothesis."

"What? But…I don't watch that sort of crap."

"No, you watch Downton Abbey." Sherlock seemed to be suppressing a smirk as he scrolled through the article John had been reading. "Which is, as you put it, even 'crappier' than certain varieties of adult films."

"It is not. Sherlock—"

Sherlock turned the laptop around so it faced John. "I can tell you the entire series three plot right now if you want."

"You don't even watch the show!"

"You're right. I don't." Sherlock pointed to the article on the screen. "This gave me a relatively succinct summary of the series and the spoilers, albeit in a woefully grammatically incorrect way and filled with 'Oooh' and 'gosh' and 'fantastic' and 'luscious' and _far _too many exclamation points, but nonetheless enough for me to tell you the basic outline of every single episode for the next series."

"Spare me." John almost slammed his coffee mug onto the desk. "You know what? I don't give a damn if you can spell it all out. You're just—bored."

"Bored?" Sherlock cocked his head. "Yes, I am."

"Don't take it out on me. Go and bust some drug cartel or something. Shoot someone for all I care."

"The chauffeur—what was his name? Branson?—will say something rude and inconsiderate of the aristocracy at the rehearsal dinner for Mary and Matthew's wedding…which, by the way, will—"

"I don't want to hear. That'd ruin it." John clapped his hands over his ears in an attempt to block him out, but Sherlock was already starting to pace and talk faster than the speed of light. "See? I can't hear you—I can't hear you—"

"—will be delayed, but not by a considerable amount of time, because of disagreement whether or not said chauffeur had the right to speak his mind at the dinner table, but then later both of them will go crawling back to each other because they just _love_ each other too much," Sherlock continued, disdainfully. "And then of course, their blissful honeymoon is to be interrupted by this visit they mentioned here, from his ex-fiancée's father, who owed money to one certain Richard Carlisle as mentioned previously in the series. Now—this means that there is to be conflict about whether they should settle the debt or not, leading to further arguments between the _star-crossed lovers._" He widened his eyes in sheer sarcasm. "And then of course the 'stellar' Shirley MacLaine will clash with the 'wonderful' Maggie Smith. I've never heard of them."

"—I can't hear you, I—wait—" John lowered his hands from his ears. "You haven't heard of either Maggie Smith _or_ Shirley MacLaine?"

"No. You know I delete unnecessary information from my brain. It's my—"

"I know your brain is a hard drive," John said. "All right, never mind."

Sherlock coughed and took a deep breath. John took up his laptop and bolted from the room, trying unsuccessfully to plug his ears with one hand.

"No one likes the chauffeur, so he spends most of his time in the servants' quarters with his old colleagues who also happen to hate him. And there's a fairly transparent murder mystery too…isn't it obvious, it's the heir's valet…whatever his name is. And when the family loses their fortune they also lose the capacity to control their precious scandal just as the child of the lady and the chauffeur is born. Oh, and the grandmothers take up opposite sides on Irish independence, and—"

"_Shut up!"_ John yelled from the other room. "I'm not even listening!"

Sherlock apparently did not hear. He flung away his towel and started circling the room, stark naked. "And the gay footman will be in love with the new footman, who of course is heterosexual, and the depressed maid's going to get a boyfriend, and the ugly sister will get married and it'll be the second wedding of the series, and by then of course the family will have sorted out their financial issues and everything will be _happy_! Mostly. And then it's all going to come undone in one gigantic scene that the American women have committed fraud to keep the fortune, and then they'll start laying off their servants because the scheme has gone wrong. Oh, and the Dowager Countess will die in the Christmas Special."

John appeared in the doorway just then, with large cotton balls stuffed in his ears. "I can't hear you!" he shouted, walking pointedly towards the desk to retrieve his coffee.

"But before that Mary and Matthew will have fertility issues," Sherlock prattled on, completely oblivious. "Partly due to the fact that her premenstrual hormones lead to arguments and therefore they can't be together at the proper time. Oh, yes, and when they finally do conceive approximately twelve months later, they think it's going to be a boy for the subsequent gestational period, and then in the Christmas Special they have a spectacular shouting match over something trivial, Mary goes into labour early and loses the child. Of course, it's a boy, an heir…such is the ironic world of period drama. John—why do you have cotton in your ears?"

"Eh?"

"Cotton." Sherlock pointed vaguely somewhere around John's head. "You have _cotton_ in your ears, John."

Pulling the white fluff out of his ears, John said, "What?"

"Cotton! When did you put that in your ears?"

"A…while ago," John said frankly, taking a gulp of coffee.

"You left the room?"

"I did, yeah."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed. "When?"

"About the time I put cotton in my ears, I guess."

"How long have I been talking for?"

Shrugging, John took a quick glance at his watch. "Awhile."

"Oh." Sherlock straightened up. "By my clock, it is exactly thirty-three days, fourteen hours, and twenty-four minutes before I can find out if I'm right."

"You're _counting?_" John said disbelievingly.

"Now it's thirty-three days, fourteen hours, and twenty-_three_—"

"Good, you can join Mrs. Hudson."

"_She_ watches it too?"

John nodded. "Of course she does. It's her favourite programme."


End file.
